This one is a bit of a doozy - some advice would be greatly appreciated!

[AngelSerra]

Wow, I do not know where to begin.

 

My boyfriend of nearly two years recently broke up with me because he said there were some things about the relationship that bothered him, even though he was telling me 3 days earlier that he wanted to know what kind of engagement ring I wanted and was super cuddly with me the night before he broke up with me. I know that I had been pressuring him about getting engaged and that I wanted to marry him - I would start crying and say that I was afraid that he would come to a point where he said if it has not happened by a certain point, that it would never happen. I did that on the night we broke up - I started crying, got emotional, and he got upset because though he assured me that he loved me, that did not console me. Instead of getting upset like he usually did because nothing he said would make me feel better, he said he could not do this anymore and ended things with me.

 

I have since realized that the reason why I was so fixated and worried that he would leave is because my mother was always telling me that she thought he would decide I was not the one and let me go. My mother has put stipulations on every relationship I have ever had, has said things that hurt me, and made me doubt the man I was with. She would do this until I cried my fears to him because I had heard them so often from her. I now see that I took what she said as my own and would be emotional over it until the man I was with would break up with me or I would break up with him before he had the chance to hurt me. I really love this man who just recently ended things with me, and it was this love for him that finally made me see what my mother has been doing to me. I so desperately want to share what I have learned about myself and why I pushed so hard for the next step, and why I always cried that I feared he would leave. I am just very nervous that he will not listen to what I have to say. Is there anything that I can do?

[kellydontwanttasleep]

at least u discovered one of the problems with your relationship, thats a great thing. you can try to talk to your ex, can't hurt.

[AngelSerra]

Well, one thing that he said when he broke up with me was that he needed space. He said someone he knows said there was something in the relationship that was just not right - that it reminded them of a relationship that they had in the past that did not work, so my ex said that ours probably would not either. I just do not get how he could be asking me for engagement ring ideas three days earlier, how he could cuddle me so tightly the night before, and then in less than 24 hours, feel absolutely nothing.

 

I do not want to contact him and make him feel like I am invading this time and space that he needs. I did write a letter over the past couple of weeks - he broke up with me just before Thanksgiving - and it was over the holiday that I went home, saw my mom, and she started bashing me. That was when I saw how negative and hurtful she is. However, I pushed him before and I do not want to push - but if I send him the letter now, I think that he will think I am pushing. But, I also do not want to wait too long because if I think I have a chance to get him back, I do not want that opportunity to pass me by. I really love him. I talked to a mutual friend, though - says he does not seem very upset at all.

[Patiently waiting]

Originally posted by AngelSerra

Well, one thing that he said when he broke up with me was that he needed space. He said someone he knows said there was something in the relationship that was just not right - that it reminded them of a relationship that they had in the past that did not work, so my ex said that ours probably would not either. I just do not get how he could be asking me for engagement ring ideas three days earlier, how he could cuddle me so tightly the night before, and then in less than 24 hours, feel absolutely nothing.

 

I do not want to contact him and make him feel like I am invading this time and space that he needs. I did write a letter over the past couple of weeks - he broke up with me just before Thanksgiving - and it was over the holiday that I went home, saw my mom, and she started bashing me. That was when I saw how negative and hurtful she is. However, I pushed him before and I do not want to push - but if I send him the letter now, I think that he will think I am pushing. But, I also do not want to wait too long because if I think I have a chance to get him back, I do not want that opportunity to pass me by. I really love him. I talked to a mutual friend, though - says he does not seem very upset at all.

 

 

Ok, first of all I believe when a guy says he needs space what he may really be saying is I like being with you but I don't see myself actually marrying you. I dated a guy for about a year and although we spent all our time together I had no intention of marrying him. I knew he wasn't the one, he was a "filler" til I found something better. You, yourself said he even said he told you your relationship wouldn't work. The engagement ring thing, maybe he just got caught up in the moment and then realized it was not what he really wanted after 3 days of thinking about the reality of it. Because if a guy really loves you wants to marry you, you pushing him isn't gonna make him break up with you and tell you the relationship won't work. He may get a little nervous but guys do need that little "push", otherwise I think they would never get married. You know "the ol' ball and chain" fear. I did it with my ex, my friends did it too. Sometimes guys don't know what they want, we just have to point it out to them!

[AngelSerra]

I would have thought the same thing if that was the only time that had brought up engagement. I had called his sister, who I had gotten very close with over the time that my ex and I were dating. She and I got along very well. I wanted to be the one that told her that he broken up with me. When she saw me on caller ID, she answered the phone extremely excited. She asked me how I was, I told her I was not well at all and she asked me why. I told her that her brother had just broke up with me and she screamed "WHAT!?" She then went on to say that when she and her husband saw me on caller ID that she thought it was me calling to say her brother had finally gotten off his butt and asked me to marry him.

 

She said that he has a fear of failure and if he thinks that anything even has the potential of having problems, instead of focusing on what they are and making them better, he just runs. She said that she thinks he will be back - he had been talking about marrying me with his family for the past year. The person, whoever it was - he will not tell me, that said they were concerned about our relationship, is the only person that I know that felt that way - but he is having some issues in his family - one of his sisters is going through a nasty divorce, and the other (who I talked to) is in the process of marriage counseling trying to prevent hers from heading the same way. His sister said that the only members of his family who have remained married to the same spouse are his own parents, both sets of grandparents, and one aunt. The rest are divorced, cheating, or going through a divorce. She said she just think that he needs some time to miss me - but I do not know - I love him more than anything - if I thought that my pushing would cause him to run the other way, I would never have pushed in the first place - I do not even know if I was 100% ready to just jump in and get married, but I knew that I did want to eventually marry him.

 

Again, like in my first post - most of the pressure to marry was coming from my meddling mother - and she was just very upsetting to him, and also me. I am just wondering if I should send a letter to him telling him how I finally saw what my mother was doing to us - how she was manipulating me and saying negative things about me to make me feel undesirable and that was why I pushed. The future without him is just an unbearable thought - and if he needed more time, I definitely wanted to give it to him - and if he comes back, I will give it to him - and my mother can go suck on a lemon.

[AngelSerra]

I wrote a letter to my ex that I have been debating on sending - it spills out a lot of problems that I had with myself that I do not think he ever really knew and I only just realized. This explains my original post in much more detail. I just do not know if I should send it, bury it, or burn it.

 

There are a few things I need to share with you and if you could find it in your heart, please read what I have to say. I know I was very pressuring to you toward the end, and even though you told me you loved me to death and reaffirmed that you were not going anywhere, I still behaved as if that was not enough for me, pushed for something more, and then just ended up in tears.

 

In the time following our break-up, I have had a lot of time to reflect. A few life-altering realizations came to me and have caused me to re-evaluate my approach to life and have helped me to release some of the pent up issues that I was blinded to for so long. It is amazing how much I allowed these issues to affect me and get me down. However, seeing these things has allowed me to love and know myself and know I am a pretty great person!

 

One of the things I first saw in myself very early on was the fact that I see that I have a drinking problem. I think that I have, no, I know that I have had one for quite some time. It just started to get really out of hand over this past summer with my working at speedway and getting stressed, but mostly due to my cousin’s death. That affected me much more than I realized. It continued for other reasons such as my own insecurities and self-doubt, but this is not something I want to dwell on. I am just really glad that this occurred to me before I ruined my life beyond recognition. I will say I think it took you breaking up with me to help me see this because I really needed to know what some of the issues were that caused you throw in the towel.

 

However, I did not stop there. I knew something else was not quite right. As I continued to reflect other things came to light that not only upset me, but also scared me. In the days following our break-up as I spent the Thanksgiving Holiday with my family, things about my behavior hit me like a ton of bricks.

 

I came home hoping to receive the time to get this out of my system. Instead, what I encountered were my parents, my mother mainly, being just as unable to drop issues as I was with you. I cannot believe that I forgot how they could beat an issue to death, causing me to just want to shut them out or run away. I did not want to turn into my mother’s clone, feared it, but then it turns out that I started to act just like her.

 

Both of my parents, my mother more than my father, have breathed a great load of negative energy into my heart for a very long time. If it was not for their constant stream, like a repeating record, saying if you had not made a commitment by such and such a time, you never will, I would not have been so fixated on it. To be honest they have done to me with nearly every relationship I have been in. The would plant seeds of doubt about myself, about the person I dated, and then my mother compares them to those of her past.

 

My parents would make me feel like even though the people I was with said they loved me, that they not show it in the way they thought the person should. If the relationship showed signs that things might progress to an ultimate level of commitment, then my mother would tell me if I did not do things the way she wanted me to, she would disown me. If things did not progress as the wanted, though I do not think they ever wanted them to progress at all (I was their puppet), then they would hound me with questions or comments about how they thought I was wasting my time, that the guy I was dating was just stringing me along, and always wondering how much more time I would give him before I bailed – always setting limits. I hate limits – and what they have been doing has pissed me off – no tears, just PISSED! I am so sorry that I came across as being pushy and setting limits – that is not me. That was me not being able to block their negativity and instead of getting it out in another way, I cried it out to you. I am not allowing them to do that to me anymore. I finally see the pattern. They would make me doubt myself so much that eventually the seeds of negativity they kept planting took hold and sprouted in me and made me very emotional. I would start to say or do things that jeopardized or downright ended my relationships or the fears about if the guy I was with would leave me I would break up with them and hurt them before they could hurt me. Of course, once I was single again, the tears stopped and the questions of why did too, they let me be for a while – acted supportive until the next relationship – then the vicious cycle began again.

 

When I moved out here, I did not like going home – really did not why until these last few weeks. Going home meant going out of my way to let my parents bash me and doubt myself more. Perhaps if I had not gone home the Friday before you broke up with me things would be different. I do not know for sure. What I do know is that I am no longer going to allow my parents’ comments to control my life and I do not want to act like that with others, because that is not who I am. I never meant to act in that controlling or pressuring way with you. I knew you needed time – I wish I gave it to you.

 

Despite what you may think, we are a lot more alike than you may have thought. I know my parents’ comments did not help – that is why I have approached them and told them what this has done to me. They agreed that they are pushing and said they would finally step back and let me make my own decisions and mistakes. Of course – easier said than done – they went back to their old ways in a matter of days. However, I do not feel the need to listen to them anymore.

 

I do wish I had realized all of this a long time ago. I do not know if these things would have ultimately made a difference in our relationship, but they would have definitely made a difference in my life. I admit that I still love you very much and still hope against hope that things will change. However, if they do not and you cannot recall the love you once had for me at least I finally have the power and wisdom to finally be strong for myself and cut their puppet strings.